Exposé
by shellheaded
Summary: Commercials for a tell-all programme claiming to have exclusive information about one Avengers' abusive childhood have started airing. Everyone's worried about Tony.


Notes: Written pre-movie, in response to a prompt on Avengerkink on LJ.

* * *

They had all come to an unspoken agreement that they wouldn't watch the show. They didn't read gossip rags about each other, and this would be just as bad (worse, much worse). They respected each other's privacy. Yes, they all secretly wanted to know, but even if everything on the show was true, that was not the way to find out. For the last week (since the commercial had first aired) Tony had gone silent, barely leaving his workshop, and when he did, refusing to so much as look at them.

The whole thing made Clint so angry; no one deserved to have such private things thrown out into public space like that. He'd feel bad for anyone, but this was Tony and that made it so much worse. Because, yeah, Tony could be irritating, arrogant and narcissistic, but he was still Clint's teammate (and, maybe, sort of a friend). Clint had always disliked the paparazzi, even before they'd had anything to do with him, but this made him want to strangle all the lowlifes who reported this shit and all the busy-bodies who made it profitable. This was not news and it was not helping anyone, it was about satisfying morons' curiosity and making life tougher for another human being.

* * *

'Can't you sue them or something?' Clint asked Tony one day, when he shuffled into the kitchen covered in engine grease and looking worn down.

Tony didn't even try to pretend he didn't know what Clint was talking about. 'Don't know what it's about yet. Can't prove anything and it'll have aired by the time we can,' he said as he fumbled with the coffee machine.

'This is so fucked up,' Clint said as Tony shuffled out with the freshly brewed coffee. Tony just grunted.

* * *

No one watched the programme, Clint was sure of that. But the headlines were unavoidable - the news stories and the chat show topics. It didn't take a day before everyone realised their mistake.

Cap was the first one to talk to him about it. Well, talk was probably an exaggeration. He patted Clint on the shoulder, gave him a severe look and said, 'Are you okay?' For all that Clint wanted to appreciate Cap showing his concern, he could barely restrain the urge to punch him in the face. This didn't make him weak and he wouldn't have Cap making a big deal about it. He couldn't hide the disdainful look so Cap caught on quickly enough, removed his hand from Clint's shoulder and with an apologetic smile that made Clint wince, left the room.

The first time Natasha saw him, she just shrugged and asked for a work out. She didn't beat him up too badly and he was pretty sure that was her way of being sympathetic. That really pissed him off too, but since he'd been trying to punch her unsuccessfully for the last half hour, there wasn't a lot he could do about it.

It was a couple of days before he saw Banner. But then, that was nothing new; they didn't exactly have a close relationship. When he eventually did see him, Banner sat next to him at the breakfast table, working on something techno-babbly on a tablet computer. He didn't once look up from his work, and only absentmindedly asked Clint to pass the butter. Clint decided he liked Banner more than he'd thought.

Thor was completely oblivious.

Tony didn't change. He was still working too hard and avoiding everyone. Maybe the show hadn't been about him, but Clint was pretty sure this whole thing had really messed with Tony's head (it was so much easier to think about how this affected Tony than how it affected him).

The first time Clint really saw Tony since the show aired, was of his own volition. He went down to Tony's workshop one day, because it had been three days since anyone had seen him. Clint was so antsy these days that he could really do with a good topic of conversation and whether that was 'Tony killed himself from overwork' or 'everyone stop worrying, Tony's fine' it couldn't hurt.

So Clint brewed some coffee (the only acceptable excuse for interrupting Tony's work) and made his way down to the workshop. He hurried down the last few steps as he heard a clang and a yell, but stopped just short of the door. He caught sight of Tony taking swift and unstructured kicks to one of his ridiculously expensive computers. That really freaked Clint out. Clint liked to think he knew his teammates pretty well, and ignoring the fact that he'd never actually seen Tony get truly angry before, his computers were like his babies and normally Tony threw a tantrum if one was even damaged by accident.

Tony threw another kick, and, fuck, he was going to break his foot if he carried on like that, so Clint burst in, grabbed Tony and pulled him away from the computer. 'What the hell is wrong with you?'

Tony shoved him so hard he spilled half the coffee and nearly fell over. 'Fuck off!'

'Jesus, Stark, calm down.'

Tony went completely still and stony faced. 'Barton,' he said in a strange drawn out tone that made Clint think he hadn't even realised it was him before.

'Are you okay?' It actually felt pretty good to be the one asking this time. As long as he could freak out about how messed up Stark was, he could kind of, sort of, forget about his own problems. But Tony was staring now and making him uneasy.

'I have lawyers,' Tony said out of the blue.

'Okaaay…'

'I mean, you can use them. To sue?'

Clint huffed in annoyance, because Stark really didn't get it at all. He slammed what remained of the coffee down on the nearest surface and turned to leave. 'What good would that do?' Tony's lawyers could probably bleed the guys behind the show for whatever money they were worth, but it wouldn't change anything. He'd still have to deal with the fact that his past was now public domain; he'd still have to live with the pitying looks young SHILED agents gave him every time he so much as walked down a corridor and most of all he'd still have to deal with his own team thinking he was weak.

'I'd feel better,' said Tony.

'Fuck you, Stark, fuck you.'

The next time he saw Tony was two days later. It was nearly one in the morning, when there was a tentative knock on Clint's bedroom door. Puzzled, Clint put his book aside and went to answer it.

Without a word Tony shoved past him, slammed the door (like only Tony Stark can get away with at one in the morning) and stumbled over awkward words in a way that was so unlike Tony that Clint would have laughed if it wasn't all so screwed up. 'Look, Clint, I know you don't want to talk about this shit, fuck knows I don't want to either. I just wanted to say… there's a good reason everyone thought that show was gonna be about me. So,' Tony shrugs, 'if you want to get drunk sometime, I like getting drunk, so we can… get drunk, or something.'

Clint was pretty sure Tony was drunk already, but he considered his reply for a moment all the same. 'Yeah,' he said eventually, 'okay then. Let's get drunk.' He opened his underwear drawer and dug out the expensive bottle of whiskey that Coulson has given the Avengers after they saved the world for the fifth time that year.

'You have that?' Tony looked peeved. 'I've been wondering where that went.'

'You're like a bottomless pit, Stark, we hide the booze from you if we want to save it more than a week.'

'Shut up and give me the damn bottle.'


End file.
